Letters: November 23, 2015

Liquor sales a test case

The recent announcement on the future of liquor retailing in our province should send a chilling message to the people of Saskatchewan.

Under the guise that the changes come as a result of the survey conducted last spring, the Saskatchewan Party government attempts to offer these as good for all. The consultation paper was misleading, and the results are more like manipulation than a true discussion on the future of liquor retailing.

Still this government found a way to twist results to satisfy its ideology and that of the many corporate interests that stand to profit from this decision. These changes have more to do with paying back the hundreds of thousands of dollars that big business is giving to the Sask Party to implement policy for their profit and than with serving the interests of Saskatchewan people.

Brad Wall and his government are shedding the sheep clothing they claimed was never there and showing the wolf hide of privatization beneath. This attack on public liquor sales in our province is about their vision of the future, one where corporations control the wealth and minimum wage jobs run plentiful for the working poor.

This is just the beginning. Public liquor stores are the test case. SaskPower, SaskTel, SaskEnergy, surgery, corrections, highways and many more are on the horizon of the privatization world.

Saskatchewan people have said No to privatization once. Wall should ask Elwin Hermanson what happens when you threaten the public services that are really what make Saskatchewan strong.

Bob Stadnichuk

Saskatoon

Wall fills breach

Was it only a month ago that we got rid of negativism and attack ads when the Harper government was voted out of office?

Congratulations to the premier of Saskatchewan who rushed in to fill that void. Way to go, Brad Wall.

Myrna Helen Sprecker

Saskatoon

Don’t seed mistrust

Wayne Eyre’s letter, Vetting questioned (SP, Nov. 19), referred to a speech by Republican Congressman Peter King. King laments that the Syrian refugees are not on any accessible database.

He is right. They aren’t. That’s because they are displaced persons who have run for their lives. They lived in places where no one is on a database. They lived in places where terrorism is the constant reality of their lives.

They now live in United Nations refugee camps. The people who are against Canada accepting these refugees would have us believe that candidates for resettlement are plucked at random from the throngs walking through Europe. They are not. They are selected from persons who have lived in UN refugee camps for up to two years.

I have no quarrel with the congressman. He is giving one side of a debate. He is not speaking as a recognized expert on refugees. He is expressing an opinion. To attempt to seed mistrust on an entire people based on it is not a very honourable position.

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